TorneoDude: For your headlights, did you just use a regular rebased H4 HID kit with the glare guard? Have you had any issues with excessive glare from them? I can see in the pic how it seems like the bottom half of the headlight is not sending out much light, so it seems like that would limit the amount of glare. Please let me know what your experiences are and where you got your setup. Thanks

 

No, I did not use rebased H4's. My HID's are a professional Japanese-made set-up available through JDM8000K Imports in NY. The HID in the main headlamps have an extensive cage and electronic-shutter underneath as the glare-guard you refer to. Integrated into the system's electrical harness is an electronic control box that fires the magnetic shutter under the tube to retract the "guard" for HI-beam. This setup cost a bit under $500 for the 9003/H4.

If you want LO-beam only, again, the H4 is a custom-built tube with a generous "half-pipe" guard with an end-cap coated with a non-reflective black wrinkle-coat finish underneath the tube. This produces the same nice crisp and non-glaring cut-off as the HI-LOW H4 you saw in the pictures.

I did however remove the shields from the single-stage H4's that I put into my HI-beam/driving lights as I did not want to limit upward reflection; they are high beams afterall.

Recent Experience... (last night)

I can tell you from recent experience after travelling to DC for a day-trip to the Smithsonian and returning 150 miles after dark last night, that the light-output on this set-up proved to be outstanding. Many of the miles between I-95 and home on US-17 were pitch black and the 4x HID combo turned the night into the closest approximation of daylight that I have ever experienced on any vehicle (except airplane landing lights!) in 30 years. At the same time I had plenty of light on LOW-beams (without adding the halogen fog-lights) while in DC traffic after dark, as well as on I-395 and I-95.

During the entire trip, since the low beams cut-off below the trunk level on all of even the lowest cars, I never had a single car flash their lights and I enjoyed plenty of useable foreground-to-distance light on the road ahead. We did see many BMW's, Acura's, and Toyota Prius' with OE 6,000K HID's projectors that were uncomforable to meet head-on and in a side-by-side comparison showed LESS visible light on the road than mine.


My research and personal experience tends to bear out that the difference between a "good" set-up (low-glare and plenty of useable road-illumination) and a "bad" set-up (lots of glare and weak useable light) hinges heavily on the correct focal-point and shielding of HID tube. I strongly believe that my apparent success in achieving the improved illumination with the stock headlights (plus one set of aux lamps for extra HI-beams) is due to the fact that JDM8000K custom-manufactured these HID tubesin Japan for the correct application and to closely approximate the H4 halogen's focal-point and light-pattern with an appropriate shield (glare guard).

It would appear that the only way to achieve similar results is to use a similary crafted HID-tube set-up. If the HID's are rebased from another, they are likely to be too shallow or too deep in relation to the reflector and this will affect the beam pattern adversely. The same goes for the guard. If it is not sized/shaped/positioned correctly or coated to prevent reflection, the light from the HID tube will "beam" differently and potentially negatively affect the cleaness of the cut-off. Trying to avoid glare due to a poor cut-off could force adjustment of the headlight too short in front of the vehicle and reduce the effectiveness of them on LOW-beams.

Trying to produce these results by means of a low-priced substitution of rebased D1 D2 tubes is highly unlikely to give you correct shielding and focal-point. This is because they were not made that way to begin with; they are being adapted to mount them into the appropriate base but were never designed/tested functionally for the rebased applications. Only a set-up specifically composed/tested for an H4 application is guaranteed to produce the desired results. Any other choice is just pot-luck.



I hope that that helps.

 

Please forgive this additonal ramble...

...but last night's return trip reminded me of a point about projector headlights and glare:


The light-beam on projector headlights originates from such a concentrated source that it is extremely difficult if not impossible to make them entirely non-glaring. The exposure to many OE/stock HID projector-systems in metropolitan DC, I-395/95, and Fredericksburg traffic drove this point home last night.

Depending on the exact momentary positional relationship with the approaching (from behind) or oncoming (from the opposite lanes) projector-HID equipped car, the color and glare intensity would change frequently as the road contour did. At times these would alternate in violent flashes of yellow to ultra-violet/purple.

In side-by-side lane views, the Audi A6, BMW 7--, new Accord, Acura, or other stock projector HID equipped almost always displayed consistantly spotlight like "golf *****" on the road immediately ahead with precious little diffused foreground light in between. The light from projectors appears to rely on a small amount of spillover light that is capable of diffusing off of the rounded surface of the lense but otherwise concentrates the luminance into two intense "hotspots" of relativey limited area. It therefore makes the beam more concentrated/intense in the focus area but the trade off is almost too little diffusion to produce a comparative level of foreground dispersion. Compared to the light-output of sealed-beams and other standard halogens, the projector offers the driver a notable improvement because of a signifcant increase in the amount/intensity of light in the hotspot area than we are accustomed to.

IMHO the physics involved with projectors make them a poor choice for low beams whether HID powered or halogen but a potentially excellent improvement for HI beams where a concentrated beam with low lateral dispersion/diffusion would make for improved distance vision. Projectors are essentially spot lights and this has to limit the amount of light that they can diffuse. Diffusion can only result by shifting the "viewing angle" to widen the circular spot-pattern but at the expense of the focus that created the initial advantage of the more focused beam to begin with. Perhaps that is why some manufactures are offering a more traditional lense/reflector for LOW-beam with an integrated projector for HI-beams rather than dual projectors.

This might be something to ponder when considering replacing the stock lighting for the all-projector aftermarket lamps under public review here at SL.

I would personally like to see an aftermarket xB headlamp with a 3/4 present-width rectangular LOW-beam chamber with the reflector angles adjusted for the dimesional-change, that could accomodate a HI-beam H3 projector in the remaining 1/4. This could provide a nicely non-glaring diffused low beam from what was essentially the original chamber and a projector for distance vision. That would seem to be the best of both worlds.

 

im going to disagree with everything you said about projectors.. its very clear that you dont know anything about them

have you ever driven a car equipped with oem projectors vs reflectors ?

the projector is MUCH MUCH more efficient at evenly dispersing the light .. both in distance and in width ... reflectors are known for HUGE hot spots in front of the car.. giving the impression that they are "brighter"

but its been proven that projectors are MUCH MORE efficient

the best light output for OEM HIDS at the moment is found in the following cars (this being judged on width .. distance and overall lighting)

S2000 being number 1 for lowbeam only hid
tsx right behind s2000
04 Acura TL ... pretty much an s2k with a high beam hid featire

GUESS WHAT .. they are all projectors... you wont find any reflector that will hold a flame to its projector counterpart .... ever wonder why most car manufacturers are switching to projectors for both halogen and hid ? .. because its better

ive owned many a hid reflector setup and the best of the best for hid projectors ... there is no question whatso ever that projectors CLEARLY are better then reflectors


here are some of the pros of a projector setup (a properly designed projector setup)

better light dispesrion
sharper cutoff (this actually REDUCES GLARE)
more efficient at using the most lumens

the only pos thing i can think of that a reflector setup would have over a projector setup would be the brighter hot spot in front of the car..

though having so much concentrated light in front of the car rather then more dispersed is actually bad because your eyes will focus more on the foreground lighting making it harder to see past that light down the road where the light dosent reach

 

I believe this is an over-generalization and oversimplification. Plus you have it backwards: It is projectors that spotlight NOT standard reflector units and it is easy to get the impression you have "better" light when you have a narrow concentrated beam that you can center exactly where you want. You have the floodlight and spotlight characteristics of the standard lamp type and the projector reversed. If anything, standard capsule headlamps give the "impression of being brighter" due to a more widely dispersed pattern of foreground light (flood) NOT "huge spots in front of the car" as is the case with a focused projected beam.


The classification of "efficient" depends on how closely the subject meets or exceeds its intended purpose. Vague terms like "better", "more efficient", and "brighter" are too general to be applied. It would be like arguing whether fog or driving lights are "better" or more efficient; it depends on what you want to do with them.


A projector headlight discharges the light from the source as a concentrated beam, forced into a specific conical path but it cannot "diffuse" it without adding additional patterning or filtering components not used in projector systems.

The projector sends the light beam outward in a conical pattern from the source at say a 15 - 30 degree angle. This only modification to the projector-beam is through the rounded convex lense which controls the angle and therefore the diameter of the spot. The wider the diameter, the more the luminosity is spread across the circular area of the beam. This beam must then be aimed downward to meet the road surface at an additional angle so that the result becomes essentially two concentric ovals with the brightest area (hotspots) in the center of each. The projector produces a beam similar to a spotlight and cannot disperse the light in the way you describe. It is the oval-ing of the initially round projector beam because of the downward angle to the road surface that suggests the "diffusion" you are indicating. The wider each of these compound beam angles is, the more area the light covers but with the increasing of these angles, the less concentrated/intense the luminosity of the entire beam. Since there is not other modification, the intensity of the light is relatively consistant and equal across the diameter of the beam.

The very claim that the projector is "more efficient" stems from an acknowledgement that the narrow focused beam pattern concentrates the available light-source into a narrow area thus eliminating "waste" lateral illumination that accompanies contradictory terms like "dispersion" and "diffusion". You cannot have both from a single source. The "even" quality of the light rather than the patterned diffusion created by fluted lenses or patterned reflectors is what gives the perception of a superior light pattern within the beam target area.

Non-projector headlamps rely on complex surface angles on the reflector or fluting of the lense to redirect the source output in order to direct and even-out via overlap the light pattern.

US DOT specifications vary against E-code or other national codes in that they REQUIRE hotspots by definition and you will find that headlight Visualiner spec.s for vehicle inspections specify alignment based on the position of these hotspots. E-code lamps are fluted differently than SAE US DOT so that they do not have the "bullseye" common to US lamps. All US headlights have to have a definable hotspot to a degree unecessary in most foreign countries.

If the headlights are not properly aligned, they can direct these bullseyes directly onto the pavement but the correct alignment would eliminate most of what you are refering to with standard-housing headlights.



Projectors are not simply the end-all and be all or indisputably the "best" headlights under any and all definitions. If you feel that they are, you are welcome to your opinion.

You are attempting to compare spotlights with floodlights (to put the comparison into its simplest form). Neither is the overall "best" but each is better in a given application. Not everyone agrees that two tight-patterned cone-shaped beams akin to miniature lighthouse beacons is the all-round "superior" design for all ocassions.

If projectors really were as unquestionable superior as you suggest, there is no reason why they are not installed on all vehicles. They are not technically more complex mechanisms and can be as cheaply manufactured as any other headlight. The Acura TL is of the cars that I saw last night (and other times) by the score that blinds the hell out of everybody with its tinkling yellow-to-purple pencil-beams as its angle-shifts moving down the road. My OE HID's have the benefit of not blinding someone with a high-intensity narrow shaft of light if they don't happen to be at just the right angle to me.

Contrary to your erroneous assertion about non-projector capsule headlights, I have a nice even flood of light in front of me with a range comparable to any HID projector I have been parallel with (including plenty of Acura TL's) and my pattern is much better filled in inbetween than theirs. I can also guarantee you that I have better peripheral illumination which helps me to see objects and animals to the sides of the road than is possible with a single projector set-up.



Of course, you don't have to take my words for it. Feel free to email me anytime you might be in Southeastern VA and you can come over for dinner and we can drive a few of our rural roads and compare headlights. You'll be welcomed as a friend if you'd care to come by for a visit.

 

let me chime back in here, i come from an mr2 community where mods were not as redilyt avaliable as other cars on the market. mr2 owners usually end up re-engineering our cars and making custom items. my HID's actually believe it or not do have the casper shield on them (the thing that he was talking about to bounce the light upwards) i also do agree that my housing was designed for a halogen so it would not be as optimal with HID lighting. which is also why i painted the housing to keep the light focused correctly. i can take a picture of my cutoff later this evening, if you guys wish. mind you it wont be as sharp as a projector its quite sharp for a retrofitted hid

 

Hi mD5 from my old stomping grounds!

If you mean that you blackened-out a portion of the reflector underneath the HID tube, in theory that would work too. As long as reflection off the bottom of the headlight is prevented, in preventing upward reflection it would yield the same result as a shield. The only disadvantage to it would be if you had an H4 dual-stage system. Without a relective surface at the bottom, there would be no way to bounce the light back up for the HI-beam.

Interesting input; thanks.

 

mD5: pics of your cutoff would be great!

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful info.

 

yes i painted the headlight housing but what i meant is that i have a peice of aluminum under the bulb to guide the light upwards to help create less glare

 

well ill say this .. you used alot of big talk and rambling .. but when it all boils down to it ...

PROVE that your reflector is better then projector

ill gladly post up pics of my beam pattern with my projectors.. also .. post pics of s2000 beam pattern and Tl beam pattern pics

you show me ONE reflector setup that has more even light dispersion ... take your pic about 20 ft from a wall and that will tell the story

i have had MANY oem hid reflector setups .. both OEM and retrofitted with OEM components and have also have multiple projector setups ...

there is no WAY you can tell me ANY reflector setup is going to beat projector hid setup


and DOT standard DIFFERES from ECE standard in the sense that you need to have light bleeding above the cutoff .. that is the only thing required and that light is used to illuminate overhead signs....
though the DOT and ECE steps are different .. the ECE has a longer step ..

the twinkle is nothing more then you seeing the color of the projector at the cutoff of the shield.


and the reason why ALL cars dont come with projectors... its expensive ... projectors are not cheaply made as say a reflector would be ....


as i said earlier .. show me your cutoff pics ... for that matter you can get pics of any OEM hid reflector setup and there is no way that it will be better performance wise then say a s2k .. tl or tsx ...... now just like some oem hid reflector setups.. there are the crappy projector setups ... so we'll use the s2k and tsx and tl for reference in this discussion

 

heres a pic of a s2000 projector retrofitted into a civic

notice the EVEN light distribution across the whole area of the light span .. also notice .. no glare above the cutoff .. no hot spots

and the s2000 and TL are EASILY the widest OEM hid setups out there .. you will not find one REFLECTOR setup that comes EVEN CLOSE to being as wide or as good at distant lighting as these 2



heres a pic of one headlight from a Infiniti G35 - which uses reflector hid



notice the fuzziness of the beam and the hot spots ... now compare it with the s2k .... and you are trying to tell me that the reflector setup is better ???

 

one more thing torneo dude

NO OEM hid setup is using 6000k bulbs as you stated in one of your other replies

every single manufacturer uses 4100-4300k phillips or osram bulbs


and i wont even waste a moment typing about your 8000k hid theory lol ...

 

ill finally put this to rest .... heres some pics JUST TAKEN

of G35 reflector HId vs 04 Acura TL


the proof is in the pics man .. and this is OEM hid vs OEM hid ..

still going to tell me reflector hid is better then projector

TL on bottom ... G35 on top

 

Who. The. Hell. Cares.

I can see the road fine with my stock headlights.

 

Can't we all just get along?
By the way BxB, I love that avatar. I can hear Peter everytime I see it.

 

LMAO

 

I already did post a link to my pictures.

Here is a LOW-beam shot with the headlights of the xB at 26' from the garage door:
http://groups.msn.com/2005ToyotaTorn...oto&PhotoID=77

It doesn't look anything like the G35 photo. None of your "proof" photos at the bottom are any 20 feet from a wall either.


What I see in your pictures clearly demonstrates that there are crappy OE capsule headlamp units out there. That alone doesn't prove the unquestionable and complete superiority of projectors.



As for the projector's sharp upper cut-off, there are no prizes for the most distinct line of ultimate blackness. The point was supposed to be that a clear cut off will allow you to utilize maximum lumens without it blazing above hood or trunk level of traffic ahead. Nobody gets awards for the most creative shadow-puppet silhouette. The unadulterated pattern of a reflector would otherwise be a circle on a target vertical surface and an elipse when angled downward onto the road. Since the projector achieves this cut-off by blocking-off some of the light output from reaching the lense rather than redirecting it with reflector patterning or lense fluting, this amount of the illumination is simply blocked/lost. If you were willing to similarly reduce some of the output, any other type of lamp could suffer the installation of a blind or shield to create a clear line of demarkation. (WWII military vehicles used to have covers with narrow horizontal slots to create such a controlled shaft of light and reduce detection by planes by reducing upward flare.)



As for the lack of hotspots, all headlights have hotspots. Some are easier to pick out with the naked eye and others require some extra equipment to define them but any lightbeam that originates from a single light-source has more concentrated light at its core. My headlights do not show distinct hotspots to the naked eye either unless I use the zoom feature and allow the camera to exaggerate the contrast by closing the aperature way down. When I do this, you can see the focal centers of the light that are otherwise of insufficient contrast to pickup as hotspots. From 26 feet and on a highly reflective vertical panel, they are hardly huge glaring globs of contrastingly intense light, but under these conditions they are identifiable. The same process would define the hotspots that are already somewhat visible in your photo. The beam centers appear to be directly below the "step" in the cut-offs in your photo.

http://groups.msn.com/2005ToyotaTorn...oto&PhotoID=76


A big factor in the cost of projectors is the need for meltdown-proof housings. With comparatively lower operating temps of HID's, a lower temperature projector casing becomes a potential option to reduce the cost so that they could be made comparably priced to capsule units.


I agree that Max2k is right. There's nothing wrong with the xB headlight capsules as far as lighting goes.

My stock xB capsules have a sharp enough cut-off with a nice even pattern and no glaring blobs of light like you suggest are unavoidable unless you use a projector. There is plenty of foreground light and I have a nice even/consistent field of light and more than enough peripheral lateral width to spot animals off the shoulders.

I know my lights work because my xB is a work-van. I drive it 100+ miles a day in a combo of suburban and deeply rural traffic in the dark each day. It flatly defies every nasty thing you said about headlight capsules (or "reflectors").


I don't think your OE Honda/Infinity projector/capsule comparison proved/disproved anything except that there are bad headlights out there. I think the projector pattern looks overly stretched, thin, and weak. It may have a nice crisp line at the top and bottom but it's still just a 12 volt slideprojector with a blind behind the lense to block off the light and force a certain shape. No advantage over a pair of my old Bell & Howell's except portability and just as unpleasant to look into.

But then you could never take any point of view except that projectors are nothing but superior. After all you have projector conversions to sell. www.hidretro.com , right ?
So you're right. You laid the matter to rest all right; no point wasting words with you when you could hardly be expected to take a position contrary to your business.

 

Not that I really give a crap, but couldn't you just rock headlight eyelids and have a wicked sharp cutoff line?

This whole argument strikes me as one of those things where the person who spent a ton of cash and time doing some insane setup that doesn't significantly affect how the car functions feels obligated to prove that s/he didn't waste his/her money and time.

Let's face it: HIDs might be cool to have, but there's no significant, substantial gain in safety to be had from them just like there's no real performance gains to be had from a vented CF hood. They're just cool-looking things that people do mainly because they look cool and justify by saying that they add [marginal] performance gains.

A stock hood will cover your engine fine. Stock headlights with stock headlight bulbs will light up the road fine.

 

Torneo: I understand S2B spent a good chunk of cash on his headlights ($1k+), so I don't think he's promoting anything other than that fact.

 

first off .. hidretro is not my site.. its the person that did my retros.... so i have no business to run


and second .. i just looked at the pics of your cutoff ... while it dosent seem to have any noticable glare ... that color is nonsense... 8000k is garbage .... the only thing you did by using that temp was get less useful light

there is a reason why ALL oem hids are 4100-4300 k .. its been proven that at that temp .. its the most useable light .... and has you progress up the temp scale .. you get less usable lumens.... after 6000k .. you are pretty much just wasting your money

and those pics were taken at close to 20 ft .... so dont try to make the argument that the pics are overstated due to them being closer then yours

asi i asked earlier .. have you ever ACTUALLY DRIVEN a car with hid projectors .. or are you just the textbook king ?

as i said .. i have owned both reflector and projector - PROJECTOR IS MORE efficient and better using the light given to it

but hey .. if you are happy with your reflector setup thats cool .. you might wanna drop .. mercedes.. honda.. acura... bmw a line to let them know that they are taking a step backwards by using projectors for their headlights.... because as you stated .. reflector is better

try this for me ... go to your local honda/acura dealer.. test drive .. either a tsx. . tl .. or s2k at night .. then get back in your car with your 8k headlights and tell me ... HONESTLY that what you hve is better

you recite alot of textbook info that is in fact true and i would expect you to know better.. .but u baffel me with stuff like saying that you found that the 8000k kit was the best overall for the reflector xb headlight .. you do realize that .. whether you have a 4k .. 6k 10k bulb .. its not going to change the beam pattern ... all it does is change the color of the beam .. which in your case is VERY VERY blue ... it has been proven that blue light is not as strong or visible as white light ... (going back to why oem hid is the color temp i t is) ....

i will give you props for your shielding ... since it dosent appear you have glare .. but bottom line .. you still have a kit .. a rebased kit ... (call it oem components .. but in order to fit your xb headlights .. the base had to be changed) and you are running 8000k .... which you should know full well is far inferior to a 4300k kit ...

ill end this as well .. as its apparent that you contradict yourself alot ... you have alot of information that is not correct (ie; oem 6000k hids found on oem cars..... your 8000k argument ... the list goes on)


when you have actually experienced OEM projector hid from behind the wheel .. get back to me ... im sure you will be singing a different tune